Professional Documents
Culture Documents
of the
By
_____________________
Bogomil Tselkov
Approved:
_____________________________________
Professor Oleg Pavlov, IQP Advisor
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Table of Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 3
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 4
Background ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Volatility ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Methodology.................................................................................................................................... 9
References ..................................................................................................................................... 36
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Abstract
Options are one of the most used financial instruments nowadays. The goal of the
project is to analyze different options trading strategies. The research includes ways to
price and value options and creating delta hedging simulation, based on the
Black/Scholes pricing model and Monte Carlo simulations.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to extend special thanks to my project advisor Professor Oleg Pavlov
for his great patience and support throughout the life of this project. I would also like to
thank my great friend Stefan Andreev for his constant efforts and help to build up my
knowledge in finance.
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1. Background
Wall Street is well known place for trading stock and making money. Nowadays ones
of the most useful and interesting instruments, used in the financial markets are the
options.
What is option?
def: Options are financial instruments that give the owner the right, but not the obligation,
to buy or sell an underlying security, or a futures contract.
There are mainly two types of options: call option and put option.
A call option gives the owner, the right to buy the underlying asset by a certain date for a
certain price. (John C. Hull, Options, Futures and Other Derivatives)
A put option gives the owner the right to sell the underlying asset by a certain date for a
certain price. (John C. Hull, Options, Futures and Other Derivatives)
The price in the contract is known as the exercise price or strike price. The date in the
contract is known as the expiration date or maturity. There are mainly two types of
options American and European. (There are also other types of options like Bermudian
options and Barrier options, but they will not be used in the paper).
American options can be exercised at any time up to the expiration date. European
options can be exercised only on the expiration date itself.
(John C. Hull, Options, Futures and Other Derivatives)
The logic of the option pricing theory is based on the following important questions that
produce steps to value an option:
1. What are the possible values that the underlying asset might have at the end of the
options life, and what are the probabilities that this underlying asset will have
these values.
2. What would the values of the option be if the underlying asset has the values
identified in 1?
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1.1 Volatility
In order to start analyzing and exploring these questions, first we will define a very
essential concept that we will use a lot in this paper:
The standard deviation of the annual percentage change in the price of the underlying
when that percentage change is measured on the assumption of continues compounding.
We will call the standard deviation, measured this way vol.
Note we will measure the vol on an annual basis irrespective of the life of the options.
However, since we use the annual volatility, we will use a periodic vol, notated as per,
derived from the annual vol with the relation:
Therefore we have:
per2 = 2 * time,
per = * SQRT(time)
It is mostly assumed that a stocks future price has the form of a normal distribution,
since this is the type of distribution that normal people most often use in their statistics
courses.
(Source: http://thismatter.com/money/options)
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However, the stocks future price is generally not normally distributed. The type of
distribution that most logically describes stock prices and other underlying asset prices is
a lognormal distribution. (John C. Hull, Options, Futures and Other Derivatives)
(Source: http://thismatter.com/money/options)
Unlike the normal distribution, the lognormal one is not symmetric. (Note: It has been
shown that even the lognormal distribution does not provide a perfect description of stock
prices, nevertheless it does provide a relatively good approximation.- Clifford J. Sherry
and Jason W. Sherry, The Mathematics of Technical Analysis: Applying Statistics to
Trading Stocks, Options and Futures)
Another this time well known principle is going to be used in our analysis namely the
time value of money and the risk-free rate of interest and discounting of cash flows.
The risk-free rate of interest plays a significant role in the pricing of options. For
mathematical convenience, this rate is measured as a rate continuously compounded. It is,
just like the vol, always state on an annual basis, even if the options life is less than or
more than one year.
We will notate the effective risk-free rate as re and generally we will use the relation
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We will also use the risk-free rate of interest to grow a current sum, and to discount a
future one. Just as in the time value of money theory, we use the relationship:
FV = exp(r * N) * PV
(FV is the future value, r is the risk-free rate, N is the length of time, measured in years,
and PV is the present value)
Example:
Then, for instance the future value of a $100 with a continues rate of 5.827% after 3
months is:
FV = exp(0.05825*0.25)*100 = $101.47
From our upper equation we can derive the one for the Present Value, using discounting:
PV = FV/(exp(r*N))
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2. Methodology
In a sense, all trading strategies can be divided into three basic categories. These are
speculation, hedging and arbitrage. Each of these categories can be further divided into a
number of subcategories.
Speculation involves taking position in order to profit from a forecast with respect to the
future value of some asset. This forecast is called a view. When equity options are used to
play a view, the view usually involves a forecast with respect to either the direction in
which the price of the underlying stock will move or whether the volatility embedded in
the price of the option will change. Speculative traders based on views with respect to the
direction on views about volatility are called volatility traders.
We will examine a number of speculative strategies beginning with very simple strategies
and progressing to more complex strategies. Specifically, we will consider:
Combinations
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- Buy a call (called also a naked long call)
- Buy a put (called also a naked long put)
- Write a call (called also a naked short call)
- Write a put (called also a naked short put)
In general, naked long strategies are quite popular with small investors who
want to play a directional view. While they could play the same view by taking a
position in the underlying stock or stock index, they usually dont want to risk the
full value of the underlying. Here is a representation of the naked long call.
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Naked short strategies are far less popular with small investors. The reason for
this is because they have much greater potential downside, as we can see on the
graph:
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2.1.1.2 Covered Writing Strategies
Covered writing strategies are slightly more complex than simple naked strategies. They
involve more than one position at a time. In a covered writing strategy, a party holding a
position in the underlying writes options against that position. Most of the times this is
represented by holding a long position in a stock and you write one or more call options
on the stock. These options grant the option purchaser the right to call the stock away.
It is also possible, however more rarely, to hold a short position in a stock and to write
put options against the short position. Because the first case is much more popular, we
will focus on the former.
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If we add those two positions together:
2.1.1.3 Combinations
The term combination refers to those strategies that involve:
- Being long both calls and puts on the same underlying and having the
same expiration date (also known as long combination)
- Being short both calls and puts on the same underlying and having the
same expiration date (also known as short combination)
We will look at the two most popular combinations straddles and strangles.
The straddle involves holding a call and a put option with the same strike price
and expiration date. The pattern is shown on the next figure:
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`A straddle is used when a large move is expected in the stock price, but it is
unknown in which direction.
Before we continue with the more complicated hedging strategies, we should investigate
how to value an option and what are the factors that we should take into consideration
when trying to price the option.
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2.2 Valuing Options
An option value is a function of time, the current spot price of the underlying, the strike
price of the option, the volatility of the underlying assets price and the risk-free rate of
interest.
Generally, most methods for valuing options can be categorized into two families of
methods:
- Numeric Methods
- Analytical Methods
Numeric Methods:
Numerical Methods are a group of techniques that arrive at option valuation via a
sequence of finite steps that get closer and closer to the true value.
The most widely used of the numeric methods are lattice models, and in particular the
binomial option pricing model. It was developed and published by John Cox, Stephen
Ross and Mark Rubinstein (the model is also known as Cox/Ross/Rubinstein or simply
CRR) in 1979.
We will build that model. However, in order to do that some assumptions need to be
made:
- Well talk only for European-type options
- The underlying stocks price is continuous (we have no sudden large changes)
- The underlying stocks price is lognormally distributed
- The underlying stock does not pay any dividends
- The risk-free rate of interest is constant
- Volatility is constant
- There are no transaction costs for either the option or the stock
- Trading is continuous
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: The volatility of the price of the underlying stock, measured as the
standard deviation of the annual percentage price change continuously
compounded.
T: The number of periods into which the life of the option will be divided
The binomial pricing model uses a "discrete-time framework" to trace the evolution of
the option's key underlying variable via a binomial tree, for a given number of time steps
between valuation date and option expiration.
This means that we will divide the span of time, in which the underlying asset would
evolve, into some number of discrete intervals.
We will divide the span of time into T discrete intervals and will denote the successive
intervals as 1, 2, 3, , T. (We will use the current time as 0). The length of each of these
intervals in years is /T. (: The time to option expiry measured in years).
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Now the question is by how much the stock price might go up and down each period?
The answer is obtained by using the so called periodic vol:
per = * SQRT(/T)
For example, if we have an annual volatility of 20% and we have the total period of time
three months. The periodic volatility would be:
= 5.77%
Exp(+0.0577) * S, and
Exp(-0.0577) * S (if S is the current price of the underlying)
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Then if we continue this process we will produce the following binomial tree:
We have now described how prices evolve over time. However, we have not considered
the probability of the price rising up or falling down each period.
Lets assume that the probability of the price to rise up is p. Since we have the only
alternative option of the price to fall down, the probability of the price to go down will be
1-p.
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The key to deriving the probabilities is based on the risk-neutral pricing. Our expected
value should basically earn the risk-free rare.
Therefore we have:
p = (E(S) D)/(U-D), and since the expected value earns the risk-free rate we have:
Now we are ready to complete the four steps described at the beginning of the section,
namely:
1. What are the possible values that the underlying asset might have at the end of the
options life, and what are the probabilities that this underlying asset will have
these values.
2. What would the values of the option be if the underlying asset has the values
identified in 1?
We will show how to answer all four questions and compute the results, using the
formulas already described.
Suppose we want to know the value of an ATM call option on a stock that is currently
trading at $100, and the option expires in 3 months. Lets assume we know that stocks
volatility = 30%. And the continuous risk-free rate of interest is 5%.
First, we will divide our time period from 3 months to periods of 1 month each. (i.e. T =
3).
Then we have to convert our measurements into year. Therefore we have:
Our time period = 0.25 years => the length of each interval will be 0.25/3
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In general, our goal is to calculate the prices of the different possibility of the stock and
their probability, so we can have an expected value for the underlying, and therefore we
will be able to calculate how much a single option costs.
Our first step towards that is to calculate the up and down multipliers U and D and the
probabilities p and (1 p).
As we know:
Also,
Therefore,
(1 p) = 0.4976
Now we can use these values to determine all the possible future values of the stock and
their probabilities:
U = 1.09045
D = 0.91704
p = 0.5024
(1-p) = 0.4976
r = 5% per year
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Now we obtained the terminal values of the stock and we can easily calculate the
probabilities for each case, as can be seen on the figure above.
And since we are looking for the value of ATM call option with a strike at $100, then the
possible terminal values for the call option are:
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Stock Price ($) Call Option Value Probability
129.67 29.67 12.68%
109.05 9.05 37.68%
91.7 0 37.32%
77.12 0 12.32%
Therefore we can easily compute the expected value of the option, by using its final
values and their probability.
We were able to find that the option will cost $7.172 in the time t=3. Therefore, to obtain
its current price (the price at time t=0), we should simply discount that value, using the
risk-free rate, using the well known time value of money principle.
(Again we are assuming that there is no arbitrage in the market).
Therefore, the current value of the option is: = 7.172/(exp(0.05 * 0.25)) = 7.083
Same approach can be followed in order to value a put option as well. For example if we
want to evaluate a European-type put option on the same stock that we have looked in our
previous analysis. The put has expiration in three months and struck at $100. The annual
vol is again 30%, the risk-free rate is 5% and we will divide the time into 3 periods (one
month per period).
Again, following the previous procedure, we construct the tree with the values:
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Based on which, we compute the total value of the call option:
Again, we discount the value to obtain the present value of the option:
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Analytical Methods
This method was first used by Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, with the assistance of
Robert Merton, in 1969. It became famous as Black/Scholes model in 1973 and later on
as Black/Scholes/Merton model.
This approach derives a complete solution that takes the form of an equation or formula.
The formula requires specific inputs and produces an unambiguous solution as option
value.
It is very important to note that the Black/Scholes model uses an arbitrage-free approach,
which means that it is possible to create a continuously risk-free position by holding an
appropriate portfolio consisting of call option on the underlying and units of underlying.
As such, the portfolio should earn the risk-free rate.
T: The number of periods into which the life of the option will be divided
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N(d): The area under a cumulative standard normal distribution from - to the
value of d. (used in the Black/Scholes formula)
Assuming there are no dividends paid, the Black-Scholes gives the following formulas
for calculating the value of put(P) and call(C) options:
Now lets use the Black/Scholes model to evaluate the same put and call options as
before, having the same market conditions:
Stock, currently trading at $100,
ATM options,
Volatility = 30%,
Time to expiration = 0.25 years
Interest rate = 5%
Lets compare the results with the ones from the Binomial Model:
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Model: Call Value: Put Value:
Black/Scholes 6.58 6.341
Binomial 7.08 5.843
We can easily see that there is a small difference between the values obtained by the
Black/Scholes and the Binomial Model. It is due to the fact that there is a tradeoff
between the computational time and the accuracy of the Binomial Model.
To compute the value of the options, we separated the time interval to only 3 intervals.
Lets look at the graph, comparing the Black/Scholes value to the Binomial, based on the
number of intervals that we create:
As we can see, the more time intervals we have, the closer our value is to the
Black/Scholes (real) value. Therefore, using the Binomial Method, we face a tradeoff
between the computational time and the accuracy of our approximation.
Now as we know how to use Binomial and Black/Scholes Models to price options
we can continue with more advanced trading strategies.
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For this reason lets consider a portfolio, that has one call option and long position
in delta shares of stock. We will try to calculate what is the appropriate delta that
will make our portfolio riskless.
Lets also notate the current option price (at time t=0) as f. Then lets notate the
two possibilities in time t=1 as fu and fd respectively as shown in the figure.
Since we have delta shares, and one option, and we want to create a riskless
portfolio, then the value of the portfolio in both cases at time t = 1 should be the
same.
One hand, if the stock price goes up, the value of our portfolio will be:
U * S * delta - fu
And on the other hand, if the stock price goes down, the value of the portfolio is:
D * S * delta fd
Therefore we want:
U * S * delta fu = D * S * delta fd
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<=> delta = (fu fd)/(U*S D*S)
In other words, our delta should represent the rate of change of the option price, in
respect to the rate of change of the stock price.
What we have just calculated is the first and the most important, of the option
Greek. It is known as delta. As we mentioned before, the value of an option is a
function of five key value drivers:
C = f(S, X, , r, )
The Greeks measure exactly the sensitivity in an options value to each one of
those drivers.
It is important to note that even though we used binomial model to show the
representation of delta, we need to recognize that just as the binomial model give
approximations of true option values, using such models to derive option Greeks
will only produce approximations of the true values of the option Greeks.
Again, the quality of these approximations depends on how many periods we
divide the life of the option. The more periods there are, the better the
approximations.
Hedges that are set up at the beginning and never changes are known as static-
hedging schemes. However, much more interesting are the dynamic-hedging
schemes and we will look at them more closely.
3. Hedging Simulations
Since changes, the investors position can remain delta hedged (i.e. neutral) only
for a relatively short period of time, the hedge has to be adjusted periodically.
This is also known as rebalancing.
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We will use the following market conditions for our model:
Since no historical data was available for the experiment, we will begin building
our model by first, following the distribution of the stock prices namely
lognormal distribution, creating a normal distribution, using standard Excel
features as shown in the figure:
After we created a series of stock price with random movement every day,
following lognormal distribution, we are ready to begin our hedging.
Delta = N(d1)
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Our strategy is going to be to calculate the shares of stock needed every day in
order to perfectly hedge our position and then rebalance the portfolio.
Then we will be interested to see what the outcome is at the end of the 600 day
if we lose or gain money or we stay even, compared to the interest-rate return.
Running this experiment produced the following distribution of the total gain/loss
of our portfolio:
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In other words, we have a normal distibution of the gain/loss of our portfolio
cented at 0. Therefore we achieved almost a perfect hedging and our portfolio will
have a constant outcome (equal to the risk-free rate as described in the previous
section of the paper), no matter in which direction the stock price goes. (Note that
we generated random process for the stock price movement).
We can conclude that if we have no transaction cost, doing daily rebalancing and
delta hedging (by bying or selling the appropriate shares of stock) will well lead
to a perfectly hedged portfolio in which the outcome does not depend on the
movement of the stock price.
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That is why it was quite interesting to continue with the hedging investigation
under some different conditions namely what will happen if there is
transaction cost?
Again we use the same market conditions, but this time we intoduce and will use
another field called transaction cost. In our experiment we will have transaction
cost = 0.01, which means that we have to lose 1% of each transaction we make.
As we can see from the graph, this time the distribution is centered around -$3.5,
which means that we will lose 3.5 dollars on average for reaballancing our
portfolio.
Considering the fact we have a transaction cost of 1% for each buying/selling
activities we do, it seems quite natural that rebalancing the portfolio each day will
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lose some money. However, can we still rebalance the potrfolio after a different
time window and lose less?
Lets see what happens if we try to rebalance our portfolio any other day, instead
of every day.
As you can see form the figure, we adjust our delta (shares in stock) every other
day, which should lead to smaller overall transaction cost.
Again, after using Monte Carlo approach, we obtain the following distribution of
our final gain/lose balance:
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As a results, we can conclude that the average loss from the 2-day rebalancing is
around $1.9, compared to the almost $3.5 lost when rebalancing every day.
However, we have a tradeoff between cost and security. During the time when we do not
have a perfectly hedged portfolio we might lose money if the stock changes its price in an
unfavorable direction.
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4. Further Investigations
How to know when to hedge and when not to? Is there any market indication that can tell
us what the best strategy is? These and many other questions rose after the already made
experiments.
The key for this further analysis is the connection between the delta and the other Greeks.
Even thought, the relation and calculation of delta and the other Greeks have been
implemented in our model, the absence of real data made the analysis of such relationship
impossible and the results were not satisfactory.
This simulation and paper can easily be continues if real market data is used. Then it will
be possible to analyze the connection between the Greeks and the conditions that should
be the drivers to the hedge.
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5. References
John C. Hull, Options, Futures and Other Derivatives, Prentice Hall; 6 edition (June 20,
2005)
http://wikipedia.org
Little, Jeffrey & Rhodes, Lucian. (2004), Understanding Wall Street, 4th edition,
McGraw-Hill, USA
Malkiel, Burton. (2005), A Random Walk Down Wall Street. The Time-Tested Strategy
for Successful Investing, 8th edition, W. W. Norton, USA
Marshall, John & Ellis, M. () Investment Banking and Brokerage, McGraw-Hill, USA.
Weiss, David. (1993), After the Trade is Made, New York Institute of Finance, USA.
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